France

The project ‘Rêvolutions‘ by artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot (b.1962, Nice) accompanied by curator Emma Lavigne, which will be presented at the Venice Biennale 56th International Art Exhibition, will transform the French pavilion into an oneiric and organic island.

The pavilion is partially covered by the foam previously used in the series ‘bruitformé‘ [shapednoise], an expanding substance which flows from the top of the building, transforming the neoclassical architecture into a moving, living organism, which develops or evolves, in relation to noise; the flux of information captured and distorted.

Mobile trees, ‘transHumUs‘, can be found at the interior and exterior of the pavilion. These create a choreography through their slow swaying movements and produce their own sound partition from the low-voltage electrical currents that their movements generate. The visitors become spectators and can follow the trees’ hypnotic evolution from the comfort of large sofas, in the half light of two side rooms, each equipped with a camera obscura, projecting an inverted image of the trees and the clouds overhead. This smooth and majestic choreography offers the visitors an opportunity to be immersed by an ocean of sounds made by the trees.

The organic island or ecosystem created by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot rekindles our taste for the beauty of Italian mannerist gardens, all the while affirming its contemporaneity and its implicit political dimension. By manipulating the systems that control human beings and their movements, he composes a poetic work where man can inhabit spaces of liberty and peculiar beauty.
During the Biennale, a catalogue accompanying the exhibition will be co-edited by the publishing house Analogues, and the Institut français.